ghastly
Americanadjective
-
shockingly frightful or dreadful; horrible.
a ghastly murder.
-
resembling a ghost, especially in being very pale.
a ghastly look to his face.
- Synonyms:
- cadaverous, pallid, deathlike
-
terrible; very bad.
a ghastly error.
adverb
-
Also ghastlily ghastily in a ghastly manner; horribly; terribly.
-
with a deathlike quality.
adjective
-
informal very bad or unpleasant
-
deathly pale; wan
-
informal extremely unwell; ill
they felt ghastly after the party
-
terrifying; horrible
adverb
-
unhealthily; sickly
ghastly pale
-
archaic in a horrible or hideous manner
Usage
What does ghastly mean? Ghastly means dreadful, horrible, terrible, or shockingly frightful. Ghastly is more common in everyday usage in the U. K. than in the U. S., but it is used in the same ways in both places. It can be applied in a range of serious and not-so-serious ways. Ghastly can also mean resembling a ghost due to being very pale. Less commonly, it can be used as an adverb. Example: Our dinner was positively ghastly—all the food was underseasoned and overcooked until it was nearly inedible.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of ghastly
Explanation
Something that's ghastly isn't just gross. It's shockingly, horrifyingly unpleasant — so gruesome and grisly that it makes you want to puke. An adjective used to describe that which inspires visions of death and feelings of revulsion, ghastly originated circa 1300. It is very close in meaning to the similarly spelled ghostly. In fact, the word in Old English was originally spelled gastli. But over the years, people confused gastli with ghost, began to adopt the gh- spelling. But don't you forget the "h" - that would be a ghastly spelling error on your part.
Vocabulary lists containing ghastly
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
There’s nothing sensational or notably judgmental in Ms. Aviv’s treatment of this ghastly story, which is not to say that she is morally neutral; she’s not.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 24, 2026
None of this could keep the wedding, reported the Daily Mail, from being “quite ghastly and tacky.”
From Salon ● Jul. 9, 2026
While adamantly miserabilist, it does have a plot or at least one shocking plot point that’s so ghastly it made me giddy.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 19, 2026
"Surely part of the definition of being in a free society is people say ghastly things, offensive things, awful things, ugly things, and we don't sweep them under the carpet," he has said.
From BBC ● Sep. 22, 2025
Below and ahead of them, lit up like a ghastly funfair, was a rectangle of stark, garish white light desecrating an otherwise blacked-out landscape.
From "Code Name Verity" by Elizabeth Wein
Not least because, given various developing news stories relating to our hosts, the tournament has rather ghastlier noises-off than usual.
From The Guardian ● Jun. 11, 2018
Sigmund Freud himself could not have contrived a ghastlier childhood for a poet.
From Time Magazine Archive
Now investigators believe that both versions have a piece of the even ghastlier truth.
From Time Magazine Archive
A greater yet and ghastlier sign remained Our heedless hearts to terrify anew.
From The Æneid of Virgil Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor by Taylor, Edward Fairfax
He is beside The ghastly Julio, and his ghastlier bride.
From The Death-Wake or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras by Lang, Andrew
There’s a darkly funny early shot of Rudolf riding a horse from his yard up to the gates of Auschwitz, completing the world’s shortest, ghastliest commute.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 14, 2023
Historian Timothy Snyder has defined Ukraine and its Eastern European vicinity as the Bloodlands, the most violent frontier of the ghastliest era in human history.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 23, 2022
They made it to the Super Bowl in 2014, only to have the ghastliest ending in football history against the Patriots.
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 9, 2021
It was that ghastliest of hours — 3 a.m. — bedtime a distant memory and daylight an eternity away.
From New York Times ● Oct. 30, 2020
From that far and peaceful world the light poured floodingly down; it shone in under the projecting capstone; it struck upon the raised altar and revealed in ghastliest detail the gruesome offering there.
From Brood of the Dark Moon by Diffin, Charles Willard
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
